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From educational apps to digital textbooks, tablets can be a great tool for teens and even younger kids. Students can do just about everything they need on a tablet, especially if you pair it with a keyboard or keyboard case for easy writing and note-taking. For younger learners, an entire world of educational apps can appear right at their fingertips, along with easy access to plenty of age-appropriate content to read or watch. If you know where to look, you won't have to spend a fortune to find solid slate — for a super-savvy price.

Which tablet you get depends on your student's needs — and your budget. If you're a budget-conscious shopper — and who isn't? — keep these buying tips in mind to keep the cost down:

If used mainly at home or at school, you'll need just a Wi-Fi-capable tablet, without an additional 3G or 4G Internet option. Not only would the price be higher upfront for cellular data-ready models, but that service will cost a monthly fee. As long as there's access to a secure Wi-Fi, you don't need anything else.

For average use, your student isn't likely to need more than the lowest amount of storage space — books, apps and homework assignments don't take up a lot of room, and low-end, 16GB models should be more than enough. If your child works with videos or video editing, you may want to consider more storage.

Certified refurbished models are often as good as new and usually come with the same warranty as a new product for a worthwhile discount. Look for these at MacMall, New Egg or Amazon — to name a few.

Now that you know the basics, here are our favorite tablets for students of all ages:

The iPad's excellent selection of apps — over 375,000 designed especially for the tablet including a stellar selection of educational apps — makes it our top tablet choice for students. Additionally, there's a version in both 10-inch and 8-inch and one of the models is sure to suit your budget: the iPad costs $500, the iPad 2 costs $400, and the ultra-portable iPad mini costs $330. And because the tablet is so popular, it's relatively easy to find used and refurbished models to cut your costs even further.

We do expect a refresh on the iPad coming out this October, so you might want to hold off a few more weeks and either spring for the latest and greatest, or enjoy deeper discounts on older models.

It's impossible to beat Amazon's aggressively priced Kindle Fire HD. This 7-inch Android tablet is priced like a budget tablet, selling for just $160 on a promotion right now, but it has the power to stand up to almost anything on the market. This is also an excellent choice for younger children: Amazon offers great parental controls with Kindle FreeTime, and the Kindle FreeTime Unlimited subscription service offers unlimited access to a selection of age-appropriate books, games, movies and TV shows ($5 a month or $3 a month if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber).

As with the iPad, Amazon also is likely to update the Kindle Fire soon, which again, could mean waiting will net you a better deal on a newer gadget. Last but not least, several of my friends have complained that the Kindle is hard to get online and keep online. I haven't had Wi-Fi connection issues myself, but more than a dozen friends of mine have. So if constantly being online and surfing the Net is important to you or your student, this is another consideration.

If your child is younger — between the ages of 4 and 9 — the 7-inch LeapPad Ultra is designed with the younger set in mind. That means it has excellent parental controls, kid-tough construction, access to tons of kid-safe content (over 800 apps, games, videos, and books) curated by LeapFrog, and can access the Internet where kids can visit age-appropriate websites.

The only thing we don't like about the LeapPad is that it comes with a scant 11 apps — and anything else your child wants you'll need to buy. But priced at $150, it's the least-expensive tablet on our list and it may be the perfect choice for your child.

The Nexus 7 is a great size for portability: It is comparable in size to a paperback book (and weighs just 0.64 pounds), and yet it can carry a whole library of content. The Nexus 7 sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, which makes it lightning-fast, with a rich, full HD display. And because Google just released a new model of this Android powerhouse, you know you're getting the latest tech, which means it will take longer for your child to insist on replacing it because it's obsolete.

If your child is younger, the Kindle Fire HD with a FreeTime Unlimited subscription or the LeapPad Ultra will probably suit him or her better, but a high school or college student will love the Nexus 7 because it has full access to Google's Play store, which means it has more apps, books, movies and music to enjoy. The Nexus 7 starts at $230.

The Galaxy Note is an 8- or 10-inch tablet with a twist: It comes with Samsung's S Pen stylus, which makes it a great tablet for drawing, doodling or taking notes by hand. If drawing is a particular interest of your child, you won't find a better tablet for it than the Galaxy Note. But if your child doesn't care about drawing, you're probably better off choosing something else.

The larger Galaxy Note 10.1 is the size of a pad of paper, which makes it an ideal choice for a budding artist, while the smaller Galaxy Note 8.0 is more the size of a notepad and great for scribbling notes. Expect to pay $500 for the 10.1 or $400 for the 8.0 — though you can find sales or deals if you shop around.

This high-end, 10-inch Android tablet can be paired with a keyboard dock that adds to its battery life and turns it into a lightweight laptop — a great choice for students who need a bit more than a tablet but don't quite need their own laptop. Its 14 hours of battery life (with the keyboard dock) and high-resolution screen (1080p) are sure to please even the pickiest tech-loving student.

Expect to pay around $400 for the tablet and another $130 for the keyboard. However, be sure to look around online: We've seen Asus tablets (and refurbished models) available for less.

Another excellent option for students who need more than a tablet but less than their own laptop, this 10-inch tablet runs the full version of Windows 8, which means it will run familiar Windows apps like Microsoft Office — which the ThinkPad Tablet 2 comes with. Add in a keyboard, and this tablet will rival most laptops.

Of course, this much functionality comes with a hefty price tag: The ThinkPad Tablet 2 starts at $566, and the keyboard costs $120.

If you like the sound of a Windows 8 tablet, but you're looking for something a bit smaller — in size and in cost — the Acer's 8-inch Iconia W is an excellent option. This 8-inch tablet is lighter and more portable than the ThinkPad Tablet 2, but still runs Windows 8 and all of your favorite Windows apps.

This small-scale Iconia costs $380, but you'll have to pay another $80 to add Microsoft Office 365 University to the package.

Gripcase iPad protection case(Photo: Andy Rogers, Gripcase)

TABLET OR LAPTOP (OR ULTRABOOK)?

While tablets are expected to take over the mobile computing world by 2015, there are times that your student needs to create, rather than consume, and for them, a laptop or lightweight ultrabook is the better choice. Tablets are great for surfing the Web, playing games, checking e-mail, watching movies, listening to music — all of the ways we consume digital information. For creation — word processing, graphic design, spreadsheets, all of the serious stuff of latter high school and college these days — a tablet could fall short.

Switching from app to app — say, from a word-processing program for writing a paper to an Internet browser for research — is a lot more sluggish on a tablet than on a full-scale computer. And the smaller screen doesn't help much, either. However, if your student uses a shared computer at home, a tablet may be a good companion to let them easily take notes, read textbooks and write notes while they're on the go.

Security remains an issue on all Internet-enabled devices, so whatever you choose, be sure to load and update Internet security software, use the parental control settings and block app store and Web browsing (for younger kids) and consider investing in deeper backup protection such as Net Nanny or McAfee Family Protection.

Questions? Comments? Be sure to let us know.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. Email her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.